Status: Complete.
Better Days
1/1
My older brother died on one those warm April days right at the being of spring, when everyone’s happy with the first signs of warmer weather before them; chirping birds and longer days and the like. I was seven and he was my role model.
The two of us played at the park that day, our matching chestnut colored heads of hair shining in the sun as we laughed and chased each other around. As the sun began setting we headed home, knowing our mother would start to worry soon. Of course, within a minute of my mother’s rampage Luke would have her in hysterics, instantly forgetting what she had begun yelling at us about. I never did get to see that scene play out; it’s funny how blame is the last thing on your mind when you lose a child. Blame comes later—after despair and guilt.
It happened in the blink of an eye. One second we were crossing the road, his seventeen year old boy hand holding my more dainty doll-like one, and then he was going back to grab my hat which had flown off in a sudden gust of wind. Next came the old lady, her eyesight having failed her years prior, driving down the darkening road. There was a crash, and I let out the high pitched scream of a young girl watching her hero be crushed beneath a motor vehicle. It was that day that I learned about death as something more than an abstract thought.
Throughout the nights listening to my mother and father sob in their bedroom, the wake, shortly followed by the funeral, and eventually the inevitable divorce that comes with the loss of one’s child; I just kept reminding myself what my brother always said.
“Remember that storms don’t last forever, Sunshine. Now, get yourself together, you’re making me look bad.” He always added something to lighten the mood, because god forbid he be too serious.
When I was sixteen I met Matt. He was a senior in college and I was a junior in high school—it was very much forbidden and I was very much infatuated. He had this beautiful head of hair as red as any flame, and smoldering brown eyes. And that grin. That grin which reminded me so much of Luke, and made my heart skip a beat from nostalgia every time he flashed it my way.
Matt was a nice enough guy. He never laid a hand on me or forced me into anything I didn’t want to do. He was hardly the patron saint of chivalry, but he was good enough to me.
Matt and I moved in together when I turned eighteen, my mum had stopped caring what I did long ago and I hadn’t seen my father in years. This older boy was my family—he was all I had besides the memory of my brother which faded with each rise and fall of the sun.
And then he got bored, or stopped loving me, or got replaced by a different person; and one day he just packed up and left.
“I can’t do this anymore,” was the only goodbye I ever got, and he left my life as quickly as he had entered it.
I wanted to die. My mother had disappeared with some guy to California or one of those states with a lot of sun, and left no forwarding address. Dad had already started a new family, and didn’t care to add to it with remnants of his not so happy past. I was alone, I hated my life and I hated the choices I had made.
I just kept thinking, “Storms don’t last forever.” Those four words kept me from ever giving up completely.
I slept on a lot of couches in those days. Some of my friends which I had kicked aside during my one year stint with Matt loved me enough to forgive me and let me stay with them as often as they could get away with. I saw a lot of dirty cellar walls and old pissed stained carpets.
And each day that I woke up in a different place, in different surroundings; whether it be a friend’s house or the homeless shelter, I thought to myself, “Storms don’t last forever.” I never stopped believing that everything my brother had said to me in my first seven years of life was gospel.
Then one day when I was taking a sponge bath in the bathroom of a local 7/11 (using my dirty shirt as a towel) I looked into the mirror. I looked into the mirror, my image not completely clear due to the dirt and grime smeared across it, and I didn’t see myself anymore. I was no longer that little girl who Luke used to call Sunshine, who he would take to the park and make up fun games for that he seemed to pull out of nowhere. I wasn’t even the twenty year old version of that little girl, all grown up but still the same deep down. No, I didn’t even know who this girl was. She certainly wasn’t somebody my perfect older brother, my hero, could be proud of. And that did it for me. This storm was not going to pass if I continued to focus on only surviving on a daily level.
After months of applying to everywhere I could think of, I got a job at the mall. I applied to community college, got good grades and transferred to a well-respected state school. For once I had formed real friendships based on more than just necessity, I felt like I was finally living the life of the person I was meant to be.
And at graduation as I looked out into the crowd, knowing that my father had decided to come and support me for once in my life I smiled the biggest smile I had formed in years. The same smile my beloved brother lit up rooms with.
I thought to myself, “Storms really don’t last forever.”
The two of us played at the park that day, our matching chestnut colored heads of hair shining in the sun as we laughed and chased each other around. As the sun began setting we headed home, knowing our mother would start to worry soon. Of course, within a minute of my mother’s rampage Luke would have her in hysterics, instantly forgetting what she had begun yelling at us about. I never did get to see that scene play out; it’s funny how blame is the last thing on your mind when you lose a child. Blame comes later—after despair and guilt.
It happened in the blink of an eye. One second we were crossing the road, his seventeen year old boy hand holding my more dainty doll-like one, and then he was going back to grab my hat which had flown off in a sudden gust of wind. Next came the old lady, her eyesight having failed her years prior, driving down the darkening road. There was a crash, and I let out the high pitched scream of a young girl watching her hero be crushed beneath a motor vehicle. It was that day that I learned about death as something more than an abstract thought.
Throughout the nights listening to my mother and father sob in their bedroom, the wake, shortly followed by the funeral, and eventually the inevitable divorce that comes with the loss of one’s child; I just kept reminding myself what my brother always said.
“Remember that storms don’t last forever, Sunshine. Now, get yourself together, you’re making me look bad.” He always added something to lighten the mood, because god forbid he be too serious.
When I was sixteen I met Matt. He was a senior in college and I was a junior in high school—it was very much forbidden and I was very much infatuated. He had this beautiful head of hair as red as any flame, and smoldering brown eyes. And that grin. That grin which reminded me so much of Luke, and made my heart skip a beat from nostalgia every time he flashed it my way.
Matt was a nice enough guy. He never laid a hand on me or forced me into anything I didn’t want to do. He was hardly the patron saint of chivalry, but he was good enough to me.
Matt and I moved in together when I turned eighteen, my mum had stopped caring what I did long ago and I hadn’t seen my father in years. This older boy was my family—he was all I had besides the memory of my brother which faded with each rise and fall of the sun.
And then he got bored, or stopped loving me, or got replaced by a different person; and one day he just packed up and left.
“I can’t do this anymore,” was the only goodbye I ever got, and he left my life as quickly as he had entered it.
I wanted to die. My mother had disappeared with some guy to California or one of those states with a lot of sun, and left no forwarding address. Dad had already started a new family, and didn’t care to add to it with remnants of his not so happy past. I was alone, I hated my life and I hated the choices I had made.
I just kept thinking, “Storms don’t last forever.” Those four words kept me from ever giving up completely.
I slept on a lot of couches in those days. Some of my friends which I had kicked aside during my one year stint with Matt loved me enough to forgive me and let me stay with them as often as they could get away with. I saw a lot of dirty cellar walls and old pissed stained carpets.
And each day that I woke up in a different place, in different surroundings; whether it be a friend’s house or the homeless shelter, I thought to myself, “Storms don’t last forever.” I never stopped believing that everything my brother had said to me in my first seven years of life was gospel.
Then one day when I was taking a sponge bath in the bathroom of a local 7/11 (using my dirty shirt as a towel) I looked into the mirror. I looked into the mirror, my image not completely clear due to the dirt and grime smeared across it, and I didn’t see myself anymore. I was no longer that little girl who Luke used to call Sunshine, who he would take to the park and make up fun games for that he seemed to pull out of nowhere. I wasn’t even the twenty year old version of that little girl, all grown up but still the same deep down. No, I didn’t even know who this girl was. She certainly wasn’t somebody my perfect older brother, my hero, could be proud of. And that did it for me. This storm was not going to pass if I continued to focus on only surviving on a daily level.
After months of applying to everywhere I could think of, I got a job at the mall. I applied to community college, got good grades and transferred to a well-respected state school. For once I had formed real friendships based on more than just necessity, I felt like I was finally living the life of the person I was meant to be.
And at graduation as I looked out into the crowd, knowing that my father had decided to come and support me for once in my life I smiled the biggest smile I had formed in years. The same smile my beloved brother lit up rooms with.
I thought to myself, “Storms really don’t last forever.”